Fresh

Izy's Out of Standard challenge over at Real Toads this week is to consider the mechanical harvest. This coincides with my sister having recently seen the documentary Fresh, about a grassroots movement away from industrial agribusiness, back towards whole foods, small local harvests and kind conditions for the food and animals we grow to eat. This movement understands that Wall Street bankers have taken over determining how the world's food is grown, and the impact is detrimental to our lives. To put it mildly.

The last 50 years has been all about pesticides and mass production, toxic-contaminated "soil", pesticide-related cancers and salmonella,  trauma endured by the warehoused fowl and animals we "grow" in cages.  Not to mention GMO's and processed/refined "foods" that have no nutritive value whatsoever. And we are ingesting all of this when we eat. No wonder illnesses have spiked as a result. Check out Izy's eerie description of driving past a mechanical harvest, over at Toads. 

The bottom line seems to be that we have spent fifty years moving away from whole foods and small farms, only to realize our future health depends upon our return to the ways of our grandparents. The Fresh movement is encouraging us to do just that, to return to  production  of whole foods which will be locally distributed and consumed.  We can grow our own in our backyards, or support local small farmers and buy local. Thankfully, we have this choice.

Take me back to the land

of my ancestors,

out to the barn in the early dawn.

Cattle softly lowing,

milk in glass bottles

clinking on the porch,

porridge

with an eye on the sky,

to make sure we get the corn in

while it's

still dry.

Tanned men tossing bales of hay

as if they were pillows,

kids catching them

up on the truck-bed,

stacking them high,

to store in the hayloft,

putting another season's

cattle fodder by.

Let me and my sister walk through

the cornstalk rows,

as we did

when we were small,

green fronds way over our heads,

as the water trickled down

the dusty rows

on hot summer mornings,

those days when the skies

were always blue,

and the peace

of the land

was all

we knew.

I will wander through 

the green pastures,

singing,

and the cows will start

to lumber after me,

clumping downhill 

in the loam,

thinking I must be there

to sing them home.

The pig in the paddock

snorffles our table-scraps,

rooting happily in the mud.

We call him Bacon,

which horrifies me,

and puts me off  breakfast.

They try to convince me 

that rabbit is chicken

at supper,

though I sit, suspicious,

glowering,

in my place.

I never did like eating

anything

that had a face.

Take me back 

- take this whole world back -

to times when 

I was young,

when the world

and our food

was whole,

when Wall Street didn't

make our food unreal,

and we didn't ingest chemicals

at every meal.

We have come so far

from our grandparents' day,

only to discover

they had 

the prescription for living 

right,

doing it their way.